First Grade News: Coral Reef

We are still Down Under ... in the Coral Reef

"Duck for President " at the Folly Theater was fabulous. We had five children's books acted out. Duck for President, Leonardo the Terrible; I Have to Go; Pirates Don't Change Diapers; and Babymouse the Musical. Check them out at the local library. Your child would love to read them to you and laugh through the memory of sharing it--remembering the production. The five actors sang songs and made the books come alive. Thank you to the cultural arts committee for making this happen for us. That was our Monday morning. A great way to begin the week! These students are so good on field trips.

Kate shared her birthday treats with us and they were delicious! She shared them with both classes. She learned to make cinnamon rolls for Father's Day in kindergarten and has been rolling dough since. We were the "happy" taste testers.

Western Day was on Tuesday for Extreme Spirit Week! This was a chance for the St. Paul's students to fill up the pantry by bringing in a canned good in exchange for dressing in theme. Tony and several others wore their cowboy hats to finish off the western look

Mothers came to help us with centers this week. We finished up a review of Kangaroos in one center. Below Ryan's mom is showing the students how big a kangaroo is compared to her height. We made aboriginal lizards with Dream Time Symbols, Australian facts and dot art. In centers with Mrs. Wiedeman we worked on the completion of our animal reports. We looked through information on diet, habitat, physical appearance and a drawing of the habitat. We will present these reports this week during Social Studies and have them on display for the other grades to see during our International Festival.

Sam made an incredible book at home with his family on the animals in Australia. The book was full of amazing facts, like the ones we are researching. He had color pictures of each animal. I'll bet if you asked Sam which animal was his favorite, he'd tell you the "thorny devil" --his animal!!!

We also worked in centers in our Handwriting Journals. We wrote our first entry for Australia, The Land Down Under! We will write in our journals after we study each part of Australia. They are spectacular!

In TNT this week we practiced for our International Festival Dance. They are very quick learners!

A message from Mrs. Abio about the International Festival:

The International Festival is quickly approaching and the children are gearing up for the extremely rich collaborative event that allows all ECC and Primary students to share with eachother all that they have learned. Please note that the festival is for the students only. This event involves over 200 students; therefore we do not have space for all our parents and friends. It is often upsetting when some parents attend and others are left to wonder why their parents could not attend. For this reason, we kindly ask that you focus your attention toward experiencing this through conversations with your children at home. We know they will have so much to tell you and we will be sure to post lots of pictures on our blog. We really appreciate your understanding.

In Science this week we extended our study of the solar system with looking at What Makes Day and Night? We demonstrated this using students. We had a student pretend they are Kansas City and face the lamp, the sun. We talked about this time of day would be sunrise and then asked the student to rotate slowly, like the earth would, on its axis. The student did one full rotation and ended up back at sunrise.